Yesterdays harvest, actually. Fresh eggs and fresh asparagus. Brace yourself for too many photos of plants! I couldn't help it. The garden is ramping up and I just couldn't stop taking photos of everything that is happening. Maybe I'm impressed by incremental progress because I'm still a new gardener, or maybe I will be this excited every spring for years to come. I can only hope so.
This is what happens to the asparagus when you skip a day of harvest - too tall! These giants, coming up in their protective chicken wire and tomato cage armour, shot above the perfect height while I was out of town overnight. It's still delicious, but more of the bottom part of the stem gets tough and goes to the compost and chicken buffet. I would prefer to cut the stem while it's short and tender and let the plant put that energy into making another stalk.
My asparagus bed is at least six years old now. Some years I plant lettuce or spinach in the bed with it. A few years ago I transplanted some extra strawberry plants in the bed, but I can't say they ever get much fruit. And yes, that yellow flower is a dandelion weed. I'm not a very tidy gardener. Garden, I'm sorry.
Can you see the juice oozing out of the cut stems in the photo above? We had rain, lots of rain, for an entire day before I cut these stalks and they were dripping with asparagus flavored juice. I know it's asparagus flavored, because I tasted it. But don't worry, I don't usually lick the asparagus before it's served!
This isn't Double D Farms celery, but three days worth of asparagus from my garden. Not a bad haul from my little backyard plot. I'm tempted to plant hundreds of plants some day and get bushels of it every spring.
Eggs and asparagus for dinner? Yes, please! You can't get any more fresh than eating food that has never been refrigerated. It tastes better to me. I think it tastes better because the food is fresh, for sure, but also because I savor every bite of food that is precious to me because I made it. Why food that was purchased with money I made doesn't have the same precious value to me, I can't say, but it doesn't. It's also weird for me to think that I'm eating the soil, rainwater, and sunlight from my back yard. I'm actually eating my yard. Well, and some chicken food from Tractor Supply and whatever other food scraps the chickens eat from the compost. I guess the asparagus is eating what ever I put the compost, which means I'm eating it too. Which means I'm eating my compost too. Aha! I think I just had a circle of life moment! That happens sometimes. Sorry.
Speaking of compost, in this photo you can see Helen scratching around looking for tasty bits in the compost on the left, behind the garlic bed. I believe my compost is citrus flavored these days, since I've been juicing so many oranges and grapefruits and the peels are slow to break down. I had to raise the chicken wire armour on the garlic since it's growing so fast the leaves were being pressed into the wire. The box in the back has a few peas coming up in the back right corner. I'm pretty sure the whole box had peas planted in it, but Helen and Mrs. Hall broke through the wire and ate them. Bad chickens!
The hops, which just a few days ago where barely peaking their heads above the leaf mulch, are bursting out of, and around, their wire cage protectors like octopus tentacles reaching for the sky. It's a bit frightening how fast they are growing. I hope I don't regret planting them near the deck. I need to quickly get some ropes hung for them to climb on. It makes me thirsty for beer just looking at them.
Seedlings in the greenhouse! The squash are like little tanks, pushing up soil as they burst out and unfurl their leaves. It seems like just yesterday when they were nothing but seeds... sniff... before long they will be all grown up and making little seeds of their own.. boo hoo. I can't wait to eat their babies.
There are also daffodils, tulips, and grape hyacinths blooming in the yard. It's so nice to have some color!
The pear trees are almost finished blooming. I have two, and they are still small, but I got many pounds of pears last year so I have high hopes of getting more this year too. I've been reading about pruning, which I've never been very good at, so these little pear trees have been my first victims.
The dogwoods are blooming, not just in my yard but everywhere. I can see them sprinkled in the forests when I'm driving. I transplanted a couple of dogwood saplings from a friends house years ago, and my little trees didn't survive the transplant shock very well. They aren't any bigger than they were when I transplanted them, but at least they have some blooms this year.
The red bud trees in the background is giving a beautiful show this spring. I pulled this trees off a highway rock cut where I was working when it was only about 18 inches tall. Now look at it, so big it's starting to shade the garden and needs to be cut back. The spindly looking things in front of the red bud are my blackberries. They have little baby leaves springing out of the stems. It won't be long until they are an impenetrable mass of tangled vines and leaves, but right now they look tame and friendly.
1 comment:
I think you have caught the spring (gardening) fever.
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